7 ms·
> The missing station was just the result of rapid, man-made climate change, with a runaway effect on the Arctic. I'm not a climate change denier, but isn't it
by throwahey 9y ago
> The missing station was just the result of rapid, man-made climate change, with a runaway effect on the Arctic.
I'm not a climate change denier, but isn't it disingenuous to label this as man-made. There isn't enough science around how the climate functions in general to make the assumption that in this specific area, the changes are a result of humans rather than natural cycles we have yet to identify because of the very little data we have.
- Retric 9y agoWe have vast amounts of data. Of course we could always use more, but we have oceans of data around weather and climate.
- mikeokner 9y agoIn the last decade or even century, yes. But we have very little idea what the actual norm is in terms of fluctuations over the course of a few decades in the context of millennia because we don't have data at that granularity for the vast majority of history.
- Retric 9y agoWe have less data going back millennia, but it's their. Now, if your talking 100,000+ year cycles then fine, but you need to demonstrate what makes today different from yesterday on such a scale. Consider creationist's can request an intermediary fossil from A and C, but if you find B between them they now say their is two missing links A to B and B to C. Repeat as needed. What specific data do you think is missing, for what time period, to defend what hypothesis, that makes what testable prediction?
- gerdesj 9y agoNo, we have data that goes back millions even 100's of millions of years. The granularity of much of that is rather coarse. The data for 1000s of years is quite fine grained. There are trees that are over 1000 years old and ice cores that give near monthly data going back a very long time. There are also a lot of other clues as to climate from other sources. The UK's Met. office was established in 1854 and I'm sure that several others are just as old. That's simply when weather prediction became interesting. There is loads of data (temperature, wind speed etc) from before then, from ships and land based sources. We even have data from ancient civilisations and this can sometimes be corroborated and hence other things be reasonably inferred. More modern, we know that people were ice skating on the river Thames in the 18th century - that's quite a big river and it does not freeze these days - that was a mini ice age. Anyway, we have a lot of data and it goes back a long, long, way (with a few gaps)
- jquery 9y agoWe have oceans of data around a lot of things that supposedly scientific-minded people prefer to ignore. There's also the fact that agenda-based science (not saying that's what this is) can easily produce an ocean of data, e.g., showing that tobacco doesn't cause lung cancer. EDIT: To the downvoters, I shouldn't have used "Big Tobacco". I would prefer not to name other areas of research to try and keep this non-political. I am only pointing out that data and its interpretation are two very different things, and the incentives matter.
- Angostura 9y ago> There's also the fact that agenda-based science (not saying that's what this is) can easily produce an ocean of data, e.g., showing that tobacco doesn't cause lung cancer. reply Ah yes, Big Climateology chasing the big bucks by fabricating CO2 measurements.
- Retric 9y agoBig Tobacco never actually had data preventing the link from cancer to tobacco. They simply did not publish their studies and required more data to prove the link, because it 'required more research'. Basically, the same issue people bring up with climate science, while never defining what 'enough data' is other than simply more than we have.
- orf 9y agoIt's a pretty firm scientific consensus that mankind is having an outsized impact on the changing climate. It would be disingenuous to report otherwise. Sure, we could be exacerbating natural cycles, but according to the large volumes of data we do have it's pretty clear that humans are a major contributing factor.
- uncoder0 9y agoFrom what I've read it's much closer to 100% than it is to 50% in terms of what percentage of the current warming since 1950 can be attributed to humans. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/sep/15/97-vs-3-how-much-global-warming-are-humans-causing https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...
- jquery 9y agoSerious question for those who think we know all the science (I believe in warming). Are there any models of climate change which have been predictive for the past 100 years and which existed at least 5 or more years ago?
- flukus 9y agoMost of them to varying degrees. They don't just start a model and hope it can predict the future, they test them by starting at a passed date and seeing if the can predict the present.
- throwahey 9y agoConsensus is not conclusive. It takes a special kind of hubris for someone to think they understand climate change with the minute dataset we have. We don't have enough data to guess next month's weather let alone the possible effects in 10+ years.
- oewfoewf 9y agoConsensus enough that geoengineering countermeasure "proposals" (they've already started these programs decades ago) explicitly counter the mechanisms that only humans could have started.
- gerdesj 9y agoThey go on to say: "The temperature in Barrow had been warming so fast this year, the data was automatically flagged as unreal and removed from the climate database. It was done by algorithms that were put in place to ensure that only the best data gets included in NOAA’s reports." These are algorithms that have not been triggered before. I understand that seasonal and "natural" fluctuations are taken care of. In theory that leaves man made. There is rather a lot of science around that indicates us lot as buggering up not just the climate itself but the oceans and even near space (junk). I'll grant you that this article sounds a little breathless but then the issue is a little bit important. I'll never forget the sight of an Aussie near sobbing on camera as he described coral bleaching over huge parts of the Great Barrier Reef ("Blue Planet II" - BBC). Sun Fish are seen off Cornwall, Polar bears are running out of ice to hunt across, 1 in xhundred year weather events are being seen much more regularly than their name suggests. We can ignore the science but as civilians we can only attribute so much to el Nino, seasonal variability and such like. Read a few papers yourself or read a few summaries from sources that you trust but don't summarise a shed load of research as: "There isn't enough science around how the climate functions"
- phkahler 9y agoThere isn't enough good science. If you look at the historic record (a million years or so) you'll see glaciations and interglacial periods. One thing we should expect is a new round of glaciation if nothing changes. But it's not time for that yet. A simple google for "interglacial high water mark" yielded this: https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/climate-change/changing-ice/high-water-mark https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/climate-change/changing-ice... Which indicates that sea levels have historically been several feet higher than they are today during the interglacials. There is no data on the exact temperature profile over short (100 year) historic time scales. We have evidence of data tampering - i.e. a climate model that showed the "hockey stick" regardless of what the input data was. It's a highly politicized thing. And lastly, if I accept climate change as a result of human activity I say we still don't have decent models. We need to accurately account for the effect of contrails. There is significant evidence that this matters. There is correlation between temperature rises and the increase in air traffic. It may not be "carbon" but "water vapor" that is the cause. I find these things interesting, but the headlines and stories are all very alarmist. Look at this fine article we're talking about. The data isn't all that interesting, it's just that it tripped a plausibility check someone implemented, and we don't know what the stated requirements for the check were.
- mhb 9y agoWhy does anyone care about the sideshow of what the cause of the warming is?
- tinymollusk 9y agoBecause that determines whether humans are to blame or not, which is a core component to virtue signaling. Not saying I see it in this conversation, but I have growing concerns about environmentalism-as-morality.
- kazinator 9y agoUnfortunately, we simply do not have the time to wait until blame is assigned with 100% certainty before taking action.
- tinymollusk 9y agoBut then we're using logic similar to Pascal's Wager to make important decisions.
- greglindahl 9y agoThe statement "if humans didn't cause the warming, than obviously changing what humans do can't possibly stop it" is often behind the question. And on the flip side, scientists advocating that humans change their behavior wish to show that the suggested actions will make an actual difference. Because, you know, proof and ethics and all that.
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoI'm not a climate change denier, but isn't it disingenuous to label this as man-made. I was always told to ignore everything before the 'but'.
- zimpenfish 9y agoI think the better plan is to negate everything before the 'but' since what follows is almost inevitably something that proves they're exactly what they've just claimed they aren't.